nmah6357.xml

nmah6357.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2003-11-13

I am English and had lived in New York for 5 years at that point. When I first arrived in the city and didn't know my way around, I always looked for the twin towers as then I knew where South was. They were geographical markers that I grew rather fond of.

My apartment was about half a mile from the Trade Center.
When the first plane went over my building, so low, the window fan went backwards as the air was sucked up and I heard a tremendous noise. I watched the unfolding events from the roof, along with many others. One of my most vivid memories is hearing the almost choral sound of hundreds of people on nearby roofs gasping, groaning, crying and screaming as the buildings fell down.

The following day I watched a single hearse driving up the Bowery, through the pervasive yellowish mist that had descended on Downtown. There were no other cars, and not many people. Just this single hearse with a coffin inside. I thought," How many others will there be in the coming days and weeks?". For so many families, as we know, there was not even to be that dreadful comfort.

My life changed in that I left New York and am living back in London again. The events of 9/11 had a distinct bearing on that decision. Many of my friends lost their jobs as a direct result of the financial impact of the attacks and many moved away.

I feel ashamed to admit it, but I couldn't feel the same way about the city afterwards.

That is was the dawn of a new , uncomfortable age. The world awoke to modern 'warfare' ie that wars are no longer about tanks rolling over another country's borders, but are about tribalism on a grand scale ,performed by the select, secretive few, to massive effect.

As a Limey abroad, I did not feel anything in particular about the American flag. What did catch my eye however and seemed to say a great deal, was a young Hispanic girl in Bushwick, Brooklyn who had a pair of jeans on with the twin towers depicted on the pant legs in a kind of silvery dusty paint. I don't know where she got them, but they were somehow magnificent.